That these families would be filled with strength and the Holy Spirit - equipped for the work set before them. For their health, and God's provision.
PERSECUTION
For the persecution from neighbors of the Bible study participants in Calatele. That the strong man would be bound and the Holy Spirit would open the eyes of the blind to see the truth.
SEED OF THE WORD
Please pray for the new believers in Sacuieu - that the seed of the Word would take root in their hearts.
We hope we find everyone well . We want to thank all of you for all your prayers and support.
The beginning of this summer brought us many storms. Last months we were floded for three times. The Lord protected our home, but the water destroyed all our tools, the sound sistem and the wood shalther. As we told you before we had planned to have a baptism last months. Because of the very cold wether and of the storms we were not able to have it yet, because it was suppose to be outside the village by the river. Insteed we organized an evangelism in the culture hall from Calatele were we invited a Christian gypsy band to sing. The Lord blessed it and we had the plesure of having the baptist and pentecostal churches from Calatele joinning us. They canceled their Sunday morning church services and all of them came to evangelism concert. They said it was for the first time when in the Culture Hall of their village takes place a Christian event. We spent a nice time together. We were also blessed to see that eleven gypsies received the Lord in the end.
For the last two months we have a elderly Romanian couple from the Romanian baptist church comming on regular basis to our bible studies and chuch sevices in the gypsy communities. The Lord broke down the prejudice that they have against the gypsies and now they enjoy the fellowship together with us there. We are praying that the Lord would bring more of Romanian christians to have fellowship with their gypsy brothers and sisters.
Now we have more gypsies who want to get baptised. We scheduled to have a baptism on the 22nd of August and we are praying that the Lord would use this event so that more gypsies would know the Lord, especially the families of those who get baptised. Please pray with us that wether would be nice.
This week the gypsies from Sacuieu moved their camp in the mountains . They do this every summer to collect mushrooms and blueberries. We are going up there every week to have church services, together with the gypsy brothers from Calatele. Last summer it was a great opportunity to share Christ, since in the evening all the gypsies come together around the fire, not having anything else to do, and they came and joined us in worship songs and prayer. Please pray for their hearts to be open for God’s word.
May God bless you all with His great joy and peace!
In His grace,
Hagiu family
Prayer needs:
· For those who recently received the Lord, to stay strong in God’s grace;
· For the baptism and evangelism that we will have next month;
· For the gypsy brothers and sister to be a light to their families and relatives;
· For church buildings in both villages;
· For us to stay close to the Lord and allow Him to work through us.
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Dear friends and brethren in Christ,
It has been long since we sent our last news letter.The last monthswere very challeging for us, facing many oppositions and also lots of blessingsfrom our Lord.One of the greatest blessing was seeinghow God saved a gypsy man from Calatele, and how He gave him a love for the Lord and for his brothers.In the village of Calatele we continue to meet in Danut’shouse, one of the gypsy men who receivied the Lordone year ago. His house is a blessing for us and for the ministry in this village. His family and him receive everyone gladly in their house who comes to worship the Lord. Since we meet in his house, his wife started to participate to every bible study and prayer meeting.She is very happy about the way her husband is changes since he received the Lord , and she wants to come along his side.Also the challenge in this village wasgreat one, Satan continue to oppose every work God is doing in the lifes of people. He tryes to destroy the faith of many of the believerswith all kinds of lies (one that he is using all the time is that every time somebody is sick or has someting bad happeningis because they come to church and God is cursing them for not living as God wants them. We had one brother who for few times stopped comming to church and went back to alchool because his baby was very sick. Now he is back again and he realized that God loves him in spite of anything. His baby son is now in the hospital, having a intestines surgery. Please pray for him to come home safe and for his parents to come to God for his healing.)
In the other village we were able to purchaise one of the shackthat the gypsies are using there. We been able to use it for the last monts as a place for our church meetings. It has been a blessing to have it.We are planning to start to build this summer another church building because this one that we have we doubt will last for another winter.
Here in Sacuieu we are meeting every Sunday and Thursday.Here we have around ten to fiveten adults comming on regular basis, there are times when are more or less.This place is a favorit place for the children. Every time they come with much joy to sing to the Lor, to pray and learn about Him. We have much hope for this children that they would be a new generation that will change the life of this village.
For the month of june we are planning to have a baptism.Until now we have three people whoasked to be baptised . We are praying that moreof them would decide to follow the Lord.
We are thanking everyone who support us in prayer and financilly. We received many words of encourgements from many brothers and sisters in Christ and we are very gratful for them. Thak you again for everything and may God bless you all!
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Dear friends and brethren in Christ,
It has been long since we sent our last news letter.The last monthswere very challeging for us, facing many oppositions and also lots of blessingsfrom our Lord.One of the greatest blessing was seeinghow God saved a gypsy man from Calatele, and how He gave him a love for the Lord and for his brothers.In the village of Calatele we continue to meet in Danut’shouse, one of the gypsy men who receivied the Lordone year ago. His house is a blessing for us and for the ministry in this village. His family and him receive everyone gladly in their house who comes to worship the Lord. Since we meet in his house, his wife started to participate to every bible study and prayer meeting.She is very happy about the way her husband is changes since he received the Lord , and she wants to come along his side.Also the challenge in this village wasgreat one, Satan continue to oppose every work God is doing in the lifes of people. He tryes to destroy the faith of many of the believerswith all kinds of lies (one that he is using all the time is that every time somebody is sick or has someting bad happeningis because they come to church and God is cursing them for not living as God wants them. We had one brother who for few times stopped comming to church and went back to alchool because his baby was very sick. Now he is back again and he realized that God loves him in spite of anything. His baby son is now in the hospital, having a intestines surgery. Please pray for him to come home safe and for his parents to come to God for his healing.)
In the other village we were able to purchaise one of the shackthat the gypsies are using there. We been able to use it for the last monts as a place for our church meetings. It has been a blessing to have it.We are planning to start to build this summer another church building because this one that we have we doubt will last for another winter.
Here in Sacuieu we are meeting every Sunday and Thursday.Here we have around ten to fiveten adults comming on regular basis, there are times when are more or less.This place is a favorit place for the children. Every time they come with much joy to sing to the Lor, to pray and learn about Him. We have much hope for this children that they would be a new generation that will change the life of this village.
For the month of june we are planning to have a baptism.Until now we have three people whoasked to be baptised . We are praying that moreof them would decide to follow the Lord.
We are thanking everyone who support us in prayer and financilly. We received many words of encourgements from many brothers and sisters in Christ and we are very gratful for them. Thak you again for everything and may God bless you all!
During the holiday’s season, God showed Himself again full of grace and merciful towards us and the ministry He called us to serve. As you know, we were praying for God’s provision for Christmas gifts for the children and old people, after we were announced that we won’t be able this year to receive the packages from Samaritan’s Purse.
Two weeks before Christmas God provided the money to purchase candies, cookies, chocolates and oranges for all the children and old people from both villages. We were very grateful to God. We also want to thank everyone who prayed and helped us bring the joy and the love of the Lord through these packages. But the Lord continued to pour His blessings, and one week before Christmas we received a phone call from some friends and brothers in the Lord who are serving in Cluj with another organization that they were praying for us and they talked about us with the director from Prison Fellowship (a Christian foundation who works also with street children and people), and she offered to donate us 250 shoe boxes that they received from Germany, because God blessed them more that they needed.
Since the month of November the gypsy children asked us if they would receive again gifts for Christmas. We could only tell them to pray because we don’t see any way we would be able to provide them. They started to pray seriously and kept asking us every week about them. Their faith in Jesus was built up when they sow the answers to their prayers. They didn’t doubt in all. Also their joy was much grater when they received two gifts instead of one. We delivered the gifts the days previous the Christmas, so they could use all the candies and chocolates to decorate their Christmas trees. We were also blessed to have Dawn, our sister in the Lord here with us to help us make all the bags, and also to have our gypsy brothers, Fery and Danut who helped us load the car and distribute the gifts.
This Christmas was the first one when gypsy men and women attended the Christmas Eve service. Last years they were too busy or too drunk to come. We spent a wonderful night in Sacuieu (together with our brothers from Calatele) singing carols, praying and listening the Word. After we ate together and serve cookies and pops. We ended up visiting many homes, where they where waiting for us with food on the table. We spent precious moments with them until after midnight. On Christmas day we went to Calatele, where we visited their homes and had fellowship together. On New Year Eve we had the same schedule, and again we had a blessed time.
We are very grateful to God for all the changing in the life of believers and in their homes.
We posted some pictures on our ministry blog, vladeasagypsyministry.blogspot.com
God was merciful with us and blessed us with better car. We are thankful to Him, but also to all of those who kept us in prayer and allowed God to use them in blessing our ministry.
We had seen His grace in the life of the three gypsy men from Calatele. Most of the people who knew them didn’t believe they can be changed, but God proved once again that He is the one that changes them and sustains them by His grace.
We are praising God for the body of believers from Sacuieu, who continue to join our fellowship on regular basics, especially for the oldest ladies from the village, Lina, Lucretia and Marioara, who every time encourages us with their joy and their presence.
We are thanking the Lord for Down, our sister form Arizona, who came and joined us this fall and would be with us also for the month of December. She is helping us with the children ministry, teaching the children bible studies in Romanian. The children love her. She also developed good relationships with the gypsy ladies, and with some of them really good friendships. Her presence here was indeed a blessing for us and for the ministry.
Prayer requests:
·We are currently meeting in Sacuieu in the home of an elderly couple, Lucretia and Florea. They allowed us also to do the children ministry in their yard, their home is not quit open for the children. The children are so excited to come and sing praises to the Lord and to learn more about Jesus. We see the openness of the children and understand they are an important focus of our ministry, but as the winter is coming it became harder every time to have out there the children’s Bible Study. Please pray that the Lord would provide a church building for our ministry, a warm place where the children may come to worship the Lord.
·Please pray that the believers from both villages would grow in their knowledge of God, and that they would become mature believers who would be able to lead their own people to the Lord.
·We realized that love is what draws people to the Lord, that’s why our prayer is to be filled with more love and compassion for the people we minister to, and that it would make them see more of Christ in us.
·For the last three years we were blessed with the Christmas boxes from the Samaritan Purse for the children in both villages. This year we were told that we won’t be able to receive them. The children started to ask us if they would get the gifts this Christmas (this gifts are the only gifts they receive). We could only tell them to pray and ask the Lord to provide. We are hoping and praying to be able to buy the least some oranges and candies for the 250 children and old people from both villages. Please pray with us that these children and old people would be blessed, and as the Lord would provide the finances, that we would get good deals in the stores.
vladeasagypsyministry.blogspot.com is a blog where you can find pictures and more about our ministry . May God bless you!
The summer that just past had brought us many challenges and blessings. God continued to show us how much He cares for us and for the people we minister to.
As we already told in our previous letters, we had in the beginning of this summer some people, who represents the Pentecostal Gypsy Union, coming to Calatele , because they heard that there has started a gypsy fellowship and that we don’t have a place to meet. They came and did a evangelism program there in the village, and promised the gypsies that they would come and build them a church building, a day center and a school. Also one of these men, promised Fery, our gypsy brother that they will build a house for him, too. Not knowing them, we were a little reluctant at first, because we didn’t know anything about what they have exactly in their mind and also the doctrine they believe in. This event worked out many challenges for us. At first it provoked a wave a envies among the gypsies from the other village we minister in. They became upset on us because they believed we don’t care for them since we didn’t bring anybody there to make them such promises. They refuse to come to church, thinking that in this way they punish us. We were deeply hurt, and had to really entrust the work on God’s hands. Short after this the entire village moved up in the mountains where they camp for the mushroom season. The next week we went up there for our church service, thinking that for sure again we’ll have only the two old people who continued to come (Lucretia and her husband, Florea). When we arrived there we set down on the grass in the middle of the camp, and very soon we were surrounded by almost all the people from the village. We started to talk telling them we only can come and preach them the Gospel, we have nothing else to offer them. After a long discution , we all could sit down and pray, worship the Lord and learn from His Word. After this, week after week, the gypsies from this village continue to come all together to worship the Lord together.
In Calatele, after the gypsies heard that the guys who came promised that they are going to build a house for Fery, they were too full of envies and said that they don’t want to come there anymore, because they said that they don’t want to help Fery to have a house, because the promised was maid conditioned by the fact that he would allow to have in this house the church meetings, until the church building would be finished. Now we have only three- four people coming to our fellowship on regular basis. We are trusting that the Lord again would save the situation.
After all this challenges, the people who came and did all these promises never contacted us again, we called them once to see what are their plans, and they said they would call us in five minutes. It past about two months and they never called back, nether answer to our phone call. It was an answer to our prayer, that if it is not from the Lord, to be stopped. We can’t make promises to these poor gypsies, but we continue to show up every week in their village and to tell them the promises of God.
As you know for the last year we rented a gypsy house in Sacuieu to use it for the church building. Last month the gypsies who owned the house came back from Spain and took back the house, and also before they left back in Spain they locked our church benches in their house, telling to the other gypsies if we would try to open the door and take them, they would call the police and say they we broke their house. We are praying that the Lord would provide another location to rent or resources to purchaise a location for our church services, since now the rainy season started and is no way we can meet outdoor anymore.
We are thankful to God and to all who contributed to bless us with finances for a reliable car. We are praying now for God’s direction towards what should we do, to use the money we receive to get new parts for the old car we have, or to try to find a better car to buy. Please pray together with us for this issue.
We also want to thank you all for all your support, and prayer and words of encouragement. Please continue to pray that we would be strengthen to continue His work here, and that God would rise up gypsy men in the communities that reach out to their relatives together with us.
Our children started the school this week, and our prayer is that they would set an example for their friends and teachers in school, and not be influenced by the unbelievers.
How truthfull are these words. As we served the Lord here amoung the gypsies and faced all kind of challengings, our refuge was in God and in His Word. We continued every day to go to these villages knowing in faith that God will make the seeds of His every word to grow in the heart of the gypsies. The ground was hard, with lots of weds, and Satan tried to steal away every seed we planted. But praise the Lord we could run to our God and ask Him to take care of his fields.
As we already said in our last letter, He sent us a group of gypsy brothers, a band, who came along our side for one afternoon and worket together with us in planting the Gospel in Calatele. God worked greatly that day and many gypsies responded to the altar call to give their lifes to the Lord, or rededicating their life again. The folowing weeks, people in Calatele continued to talk about the evangelism event that happend that afternoon and how blessed they felt. Danut, a gypsy man who receive the lord that night, since then he started to come to every church service in Calatele and also in commming with us every time to Sacuieu. God has changed Him a lot in the last month, he was an alcoholic, and since then stoped drinking alcohol and started to take a better care of his family. Seeing him changed and comming to church, his brother Mircea, (who received the Lord fourteen years ago in the prison and was baptised there, he was for fiveteen years in gail for murder), started fo follow Danut and came back to the Lord. Also Baba Maria is doing much better in her relationship with the Lord, and other few old ladies are attending church on regular basis.
two weeks ago, some Romanian christian men heard about Fery and the other gypsy men who received the Lord, and how a lot of people talk about their changed lifes, and they asked Fery where is our meeting place, our church. He answered them we meet under the open sky, we have no building, nothing. When they heard this they called a gypsy man who is a president of the Christian Gypsy Union here in Transilvania. He said that he would like to come and see the village and the condition in together with another Romanian guy who leads an organisation that have place a program called In Every Gypsy Village A School And a Church. They came together with other people and did an evangelism in Calatele. They told the gypsies they want to help us build a church and a gypsy school, and also a day center for the children there. The news were very good received by the people from Calatele. We now are praying that the Lord will do His will in this regard, we would be very happy for this to happen, but we don’t know them. We had a talk before this with the gypsy guy who came and had lunch with us before the event and we wanted to see what they believe in, what is their doctrine. They seem ok, but we really don’t know them. We are afraid of them not keeping their promises and then the gypsies would blame us. Please pray for this.
The news brought a lot of joy in Calatele, but not the same we can say about the people in Sacuieu. They are now very upset on us, because everything happened in Calatele, and they consider that we don’t care about them. We tried to explain them it didn’t depended on us, and this was totally from God, but they are very stubborn and limited in their comprehension. Now they are on strike! They said they are not going to come to church because we didn’t bring them anybody there to do for them the same. They are frustrated because they don’t have a church building of their own, we rented a shack until the month of August, when the gypsy family will be returning home from Spain.
Indeed our greatest need is a church building before the cold weather. Having a church building in their gypsy village we believe would give them more confidence and something that will show them every day that God is there with them, that they are not forsaken. We know their desire is a good one, but we are so limited, we can’t do anything except God would work a miracle. We pray that this miracle would happen in both villages. Also another great need is the transportation issue. We live in a village between the two gypsy villages. There is no other way we can get to the gypsies except by car. There is no bus, or train. In the last months our car kept breaking almost every week. It is an old car, but also the roads we go to these villages are in really bad conditions. Now during the summer time, the gypsies from Sacuieu keep moving from a mountain to another and camp there to pick up mushrooms and blueberries to sail to have money for their day to day living. We have to follow them, drive where they are to minister to them. Sometimes we wonder how much the car would resist to all of this. Please be praying that the Lord would provide relying transportation mean for the ministry here and some church shelters for the winter.
We are confident He can work great works as we seek His face and guidance.
Two years ago, after we remained alone in the gypsy ministry, we started to pray that God would provide coworkers that He would raise up people who would have a heart full of passion and love for the lost gypsies from this area. We realized how hard is to understand their culture, to penetrate it and bring an acceptance and a change. We started to pray that God would rise up gypsy men who would lead their people to Christ. God indeed raised up Fery, our gypsy brother from Calatele, but until now he showed himself being a good assistant, he likes to serve and to invite his people to God. He was and is a great witness of the new life that Jesus gave him, and his changed life is what his family and relatives are respecting very much. He doesn’t like to be in the front of people, but He loves to stay behind and do anything to push people to Jesus. Every day we thanked God for him, and for the great encouragement and help he is for us.
In November last year, we received a CD with a gypsy Christian band from Galati (over 600 km away from us). Listening it we started to wish for this band to come here and sing to our gypsies. It is a band of gypsy men, called The Burning Bush, full of zeal and love for God. We had no courage to even pray for this, knowing how difficult it is to get in contact with them and bring them here. We are very limited in any kind of resources, and it seemed impossible.
Few months ago, they came in our area to one of the Romanians local church, and we went to hear them. Again we realized how useful they would be in our ministry. We tried to talk with them but they were in rush and had no time. Last month a Romanian friend of us, who works with Prison Fellowship calls us and tells us that this band came to their church and he told them about us working with gypsies and asked them if they are interested to visit us. They were open and said they would love to, but are very busy, and we are very far away, but to start to pray that God would provide a day for it. It was amazing that for about ten years we didn’t meet this friend, and met him now few weeks before this event and told him about our ministry and gave him our phone number. It was God’s perfect timing.
After few weeks of prayer, we received the good news that they would come here on the 26th of May. Our friend, Liviu, expressed his desire to come together with them and bring also people from his fellowship who are now praying for us, and help to help us provide the meal for them. Also Razvan and Anca Pop from CC Cluj, wanted to come and help us in anything we need help, and also preparing delicious cookies for our guests. We were thanking God because He provided all the support we needed for this event through our brothers and sisters who came along side of us. Our surprise was greater when we found one hour before they arrived here that there are 20 gypsy men in the band, all their choir wanted to come, plus eight other people who came from the ministries from Cluj to help us. We suddenly felt as an army going to war, and indeed we were. All this men from the band they seemed to be men of prayer and faith, full of joyfull songs to the Lord.
We told a day before in both gypsy villages about this event and invited the gypsies to come. Fery had to drive many loads of gypsies from Sacuieu to Calatele, because they wanted to come, too.
The evangelism started and soon many gypsies started to gather. It was nice to see that until few of the singer were installing the sound system, the others started to spread in the village and talk with our gypsies in their native language, proclaiming the Gospel to them. The Holly Spirit started to move. Their music, their joy, love and peace and their testimonies of how God changed their life penetrated the hearts of gypsies. Soon all together, children, women and men were singing together with tears in their eyes. For us it seemed a dream. There were people who for the last three years kept rejecting Jesus, and now they were worshiping the Lord. They all listened very carefully all the witnesses of the other gypsy men, and when the altar call was made, after few minutes of hesitation starting with Baba Maria, who came to our fellowship all this years, but never committed her life to the Lord, came one by one in the front, men, women and children. It was amazing. There were over 40 people, and among these people were Fery’s parents, both mom and dead, and his youngest sister. God’s spirit moved and softened all the stony hearts. It was a blessed evening.
Coming home with the hole group, during dinner time, all the gypsy men from the bend expressed how touched they were by our ministry there, and they expressed their desire to come and help us more here. They said that our gypsies are one of the worst tribes of gypsies they know, because they are known of not fearing man and their deep involvement in witchcrafts. They also said that they went to many gypsy villages to sing and minister but they never saw such poor gypsies as them.
We were greatly blessed and pray that the Lord will provide more opportunities to collaborate with this group of Christians, and we also want to thank everyone for all the prayers for us. And please continue to pray that the village of Calatele and Sacuieu would be a continuous burning bush for the Lord, and that those who came foreword to keep their commitment and stay strong against all Satan’s attacks.
We posted a few short videos on you tube with the event:
Two weeks ago took place in Ploiesti one day Calvary Chapel Conference. Our desire and prayer were to bring with us as many as we can our gypsy brothers and sisters. The theme of teachings was Grace, and seemed to us one of the best things they could hear, and understand better. We offered the invitation to all who come to our fellowship on regular basis. They all were very excited about this invitation and expressed their desire to come. In the end because we couldn’t find a van (with a lower cost) to rent we had to use our old car and Fery’s old, old car to go. We could take with us only five gypsies (two men and three women and a child) and prayed that the Lord will have His hand upon the cars and make them run safe, and they did, praise the Lord!
We travelled the hole night (about ten hours), we were very tired, but the fellowship with our brothers and sisters was a refreshing and blessed time. For our family it is a blessing to be able to just seat and worship and listen to the teaching, and have fellowship with brothers. The hole winter we were not able to be in a church service beside the ministry that we have here in the villages. Since last month, we started to go every second week in Cluj to Calvary Chapel that is there, since the day is longer and we have enough time to drive back home and go after for church service in Sacuieu, one of the gypsy village we minister in.
For our gypsies who came with us in Ploiesti this time was a real exposure to the Calvary Chapel movement. We tried to tell them before how is the church that we come from, but their thinking is very narrow, because most of them never were in a church before. They were able to meet other Christian gypsies, who were very different from them, using the Romanian type of closing, and who were speaking most of them only Romanian language. They were able to talk to each other. It was interesting to hear how surprised both groups were about how God worked in the other gypsy tribes. Our gypsies were encouraged to hear that the others are Christians for ten years.
Even though it was very difficult to take this trip and come back the next night, we are very content that God provided the means, and we are praying that it will use for building the faith of all the gypsies, also we are praying that the Lord will grant us more opportunities of this kind.
This summer, in June, there will be the Eastern Europe Calvary Chapel Conference in Hungary. We are praying that the Lord will provide the finances for the transportation and conference fee, for our family to go there. Our children are looking foreword to meet again the other missionaries’ children and participate at the children classes. Please, pray with us if it is God’s will for us to go there, to be able to do so.
Thank you again for all your prayers and support, and may God bless you!
We would like to just let you be a part of our ministry by keeping us in prayer. So, in this letter we hope we can give you a little bit of the work that is going on here.
This winter God blessed us with one of the best winters that we had since we are here (this is our third winter since we minister here). Even though many of the adults from Secuieu, one of the gypsy villages, left to Spain for begging, our fellowship was growing constantly. The room was almost every week full with people, and this is something what we really didn’t expected, but the Lord just did this work of grace that filled our hearts with joy.
The children from Secuieu also are a great joy for us. We could see in the last two mounts how much they grew in the Lord. They are so excited for the Kids Bible Study that they just run to the car when we arrive there and they come with us in the house that we rented there to be used as church building. They don’t even have now the patience to wait so we can start the fire in the wood stove, to warm up the room. They just come in and offer to help us clean the church and make the fire so we can start earlier. They also started to behave much better then they used to be, they listen carefully and learned many songs. We can praise the Lord for this change from their life, in the beginning they were very wild and violent, and really hard to control.
In Calatele, the other gypsy village, the ministry continues by going and getting to know better the gypsies and allowing them to know us better. Since we don’t have a building there in the gypsy village, we meet every Friday in Fery’s house and have there a time of sharing and singing. There are a few people that come. Our ministry now is the most by visiting their houses, talking with them, helping them with whatever we can (medicines, driving them to hospitals, praying together with them for their problems, and counseling them whenever the Lord opens the door for it). In the last weeks more teenage boys started to come to our fellowship there, because they love the music we sing. We are praying that they will know Jesus and follow Him.
We also want to ask you to pray for a gypsy man, Trandafir. He came last night to us and said that he had a dream the night before, and in his dream Jesus appeared and told him that He wants him to start to walk on the right path. He said to Jesus, “How can I walk this path if I don’t know how to walk on it?” Jesus answered him, “I will teach you, you just walk.” The next day he came to church and said that he wants to follow Jesus and walk on God’s path. Please pray for him to surrender his entire heart and life to Jesus.
During December, the Lord has worked greatly in our hearts, He has shown us how our great insufficiency can be transformed in a great joy when we realized that God dwells in us by grace, and He takes joy in our day to day faithfulness in the small things that He entrusted us with.
We have no great things to tell you about, we only continue to serve in the poor gypsy villages, praying that the Lord will open everyday doors to show His love for these people. Until now the Lord was faithful and blessed us with many opportunities to share His love by a open preaching of the Gospel through words, or by simply being there among them, the gypsies, helping them with whatever the Lord provided (clothes, shoes, medicines, kids vitamins) and being ready to pray for them whenever they ask us to pray for their ill children or for other kind of troubles that they may have.
This winter again we were blessed to receive the shoebox gifts from the Samaritan’s Purse Ministry. This gifts were a great blessing for the children since they were the only Christmas gifts that these poor children received. It was a great opportunity of sharing Jesus’ love for us all and a great joy for the children. We went to every house in both villages together with our gypsy brother, Fery, to deliver the gifts and to share God’s love for the gypsies. We had some extra gifts left, and we started to consider where we should give them. We were not sure yet. Our son had his class Christmas celebration. The children prepared a show for the families with Christmas songs. We all went in the town to school to watch the show. There we found the teacher worried because no gifts were provided for the children. We knew then that the extra gifts we had home are for these children. My husband, Nicu, had for a long time the desire to be able to go in this school at the religion classes to preach the Gospel. We took the advantage of this opportunity and offered to bring the gifts for children. It turned that we had exactly the number of the gifts for boys and girls that performed the show and also for the rest of the children who were in that room. They were a great joy for the children, a great surprise for the parents and a blessed opportunity for Nicu to tell the children and to entire auditorium about Jesus, the greatest gift that God has given us. We are praying that the Lord will continue to work in these children and adults, and will make the seed grow deep in their hearts. We understood then better the scriptures, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5,6
“My tongue shall speak of Your word, for all Your commandments are righteousness. Let your hand become my help, for I have chosen Your percepts.”
Psalm 119:172,173
This past month the Lord showed us His great mercy and grace by keeping us in His hands and choosing to continue to bless us with his love. It has been a quiet month for us, which helped us to focus on our daily ministry.
church building in Sacuieu
We have been so blessed to see how the Lord is working in Fery’s life (our new gypsy brother) as he is seeking to do God’s will in his life. We are happy to see how the Lord put on his heart the desire to bring all his gypsy relatives and friends to Jesus, and to see how the God changed his gypsy culture habits as teaching him that he is the one that has to work to provide for his family and not only his wife, teaching him to be a loving father for his children and a good husband. Our joy is also so great when we hear other gypsy men expressing their appreciation for Fery’s changed life and the desire to follow him.
Fery and his son
Few weeks one of the worst gypsy man from the gypsy community came out of the prison after seven years for murder attempting, and the custom is that everyone will have a party for him at their house, but our surprise was great hearing that he didn’t go to any of them, but he started to go with Fery and us to all the places we went, to all the church services, prayer meetings and also he refused all the alcohol he was offered. His name is Contele, and please pray for him that he would give his life completely to Jesus.He has expressed the desire of going together with us to the prison where he was to preach the gospel to his friends there.
Nicu, Fery and Codre
Last weekend I had the opportunity of joining The Detailed Gospel Message Seminary for the young disciples organized by other Romanian Calvary Chapels in Bistrita, and I have been able to take with me three other gypsy and Romanian men. It was a great blessing for all four of us to be there and to have fellowship with other brothers and sisters from Romania.
Our confidence is that God will continue His work in the life of these gypsies, and our prayer is that He would still grant us the joy of being a part of His plan here, and give us the ability to do His will.
Thank you for all your prayers and support for our ministry. The Lord really blessed us this summer with two wonderful teams: one from Boise, Idaho and another one from CC South London. They were a great encouragement for us, and also for our gypsies. The Lord worked great things while they were here.
After the teams left, we continued to minister in the gypsy villages, helping the believers to grow in the Lord, teaching the children the ways of the Lord and praying that the Lord will bring more opportunities to share the good news with those that are not saved yet. The Lord sent a brother from London to come for 5 weeks and work side by side with us; he was an answer to our prayer that the Lord would bring other believers to join our family in ministering to the gypsies. Please pray together with us that the Lord will send other believers to help us in our ministry, because the ministry here has started to grow, and we definitely need more team members alongside my wife, our children and me.
This morning the Lord worked a great thing. Fery, our gypsy brother, visited us with his wife and children, and the Lord used this opportunity for Silvana to share the gospel with his unbelieving wife…and she received the Lord. She prayed with Silvana to be forgiven of her sins, and asked God to come into her life and change her. Praise the Lord, because He has heard Fery’s prayer (and ours) and saved his wife. Please, if you will, pray for her that she may grow in the Lord, and “… He may grant her to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in her inner being, ...that she, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to understand with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge…”
This month the Lord used a christian friend, Anna, who is working on a gypsy dialect survey, to provide the Jesus movie in our gypsies' dialect on DVD. It was a great blessing for our ministry, especially because our gypsies can't read, and we were able to give them the DVDs so they were able to hear the entire gospel in their own language. One evening, we went to one of the villages and showed the Jesus movie on a big screen outside there. It was a great opportunity to reach the men of the community who were there, having nothing else to do. After the movie, one gypsy man came to us and asked for prayer to receive Jesus. We are praying to do the same in the other village, Sacuieu, when all the people are back; they are in the mountains at the moment, collecting mushrooms and blue berries to sell, and they have no electricity up there.
Please also pray that the Lord will send rain in the mountains here, so that there may be more mushrooms for the gypsies to collect; at this time of year mushrooms provide the only source of income for the gypsies.
The mountains of Vladeasa seem to be the source of beauty and riches, not only for the inhabitants of Transylvania, but also for all the visitors who choose to spend their resting time here. It seems like nothing can look better; nothing can be more breathtaking than these mountains. Every person that visits Vladeasa is amazed at what God has created here, which provides, not just a beautiful home but, a great source of income for the Romanian inhabitants that live here.
Between these inspirational peaks, nestled in a dry valley, are the two gypsy villages of Vladeasa, Sacuieu and Calatele, striving for their daily living. These villages are completely ignored by all authorities, and by all their neighbors: nobody seems to care. Everyone in Romania wants to stay away from anything that has to do with gypsies, except Satan, who has been trying to keep them as his captives. He has taught them that the best way to succeed in life is to deceive, to abuse and to use witchcraft.
As a Romanian I was taught to never trust a gypsy, and to stay away from them as much as I could. But the Lord has taught us something different: the best way to bring a gypsy to Christ is to go out to the them, to spend time with them, to get to know them better and to get to know their culture and their way of perceiving things. For a year and a half, our time was spent getting to know them, trying to understand their hearts and ministering to them in their daily needs, sharing the Gospel on every occasion that the Lord brought to us. The children were the first ones to receive the gospel message, and then the gypsy ladies.
At the beginning of this summer, one of the gypsy men, who is highly respected in the village of Calatele, came to us and told us that he wants to become a repenter like us (“Repenter” is the word used by Romanians for born again Christians). He asked us if we would give him a Bible, and he came and prayed with us. The Lord has totally changed him: he has stopped drinking alcohol, smoking and committing adultery. All the people from the village were amazed at how Fery was changed, and some of them expressed their desire to do the same. Our joy is so great, because Fery is one of the few gypsies who know how to read, so he is able to read the Bible. He started to read the gospel of John, but when we gave him a children's Bible, to read to his children, he told us that he can understand this one better, and he is now reading the children's Bible. We are praying that he will be one of the leaders, who will lead all his people to Jesus.
In the other gypsy village, Sacuieu, the Lord worked great things this summer. More people received the Lord, and God gave them gifts of the Spirit, such as visions and speaking in tongues. A young gypsy lady came and asked me to tell Nicu to go to her house to pray before we went home, because her father had died two weeks before, and since then her and her family were not able to sleep in the night due to a haunting that was resulting in various manifestations, such as noises, objects moving, appearances of her dead father and beatings in the night. I told her that we could pray, but I stressed that she needed to receive Jesus, because He is The One who can help her. In about five minutes, I told her how Jesus died for her sins and wants to forgive her and come into her life. I asked her if she wants to receive Jesus into her heart, and her answer was "Of course." We prayed together, and after prayer I told her that if she was honest when she prayed, then she is now saved. She looked at me confused and asked me "What to be saved means?" She had never heard of this. I told her that her sins were forgiven, and that she will go to heaven now, with Jesus. Again, she was confused and asked me "That's all I had to do?" , and my answer was "Yes!" After church, we went to her home and prayed together, and during prayer she started to speak in tongues. It was amazing for us to see this, because she didn't even know what that was. We had to explain to her that it was the result of The Holy Spirit working in her. The next week, she told us of how she had reported to her husband concerning us praying with her and how she had received The Holy Spirit, and she asked her husband to pray with her and the children, and he did. They all prayed together. She told us that, since then, she had never slept better, and that there is peace in her house now; the evil spirit had gone.
After a month, more people decided to follow the Lord. We baptised ten people, six of whom received the Lord right then and there. More people received the Lord in the last two months, but they want to have some time to understand the work of God in their life, the grace and love of God. We are praying that the Lord will bless their minds so that they are able to comprehend the Word of God, since only a few gypsies are able to read . We know that the Lord can work miracles, and that the recent work in the gypsies' hearts was done "not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says The Lord of hosts."
During all these happy experiences, Satan was furious, and attacked both us and the gypsies who had received Jesus Christ. The Lord has taught us, through all this, the importance of prayer and the proclamation of His Word. We fought this battle on our knees before the Lord, and He was The One who stood up for us, and defeated our enemy.
It is our hearts desire to share with you what God has done here in the humble villages of Vladeasa. Every day and every week He continues to bless us with his grace and mercy. He kept showing us that these gypsies are precious in his eyes.
About four weeks ago, on a Tuesday, we went in one of the villages, Sacuieu, where we have every week women bible study. But two Tuesdays ago, nobody showed up. I was very disappointed and hurt, but God had something else for us to do. Usually during the women bible study, Nicu, my husband, uses this time to go and visit the men from the village to get to know them better and to share with them personally. In a short while I found it out that a baby, six months old died of high fever, having pneumonia. The parents were unbelievers, the mother came a few times to the church, but the father never came. I went up to their house to see the mom, and when I got there Nicu was out side the house talking with the father. All the children from the village followed me when I went in the house, to see the mom and the baby. They were all there around the house like little angels guarding this lifeless baby. In that moment I understood how blessed I am comparing with this poor family. Their dead baby was laying there, and they had nothing, no money, and no food. Their last money were used to buy some candies for the other children that came to see their baby friend. The father was outside not being able to say a word. The baby was his only son, they still have two other older daughters, but his pain was extreme. The mom was preparing the other daughter to go to the hospital because she was sick, too.
In a short while we left, but both of us felt to come back in the evening to help them with what we can. It is the customs to stay three day and nights with the body. When we went back there, the house was full with people, that were sitting around and smoking, everybody was surprised when we showed up. Some were embarrassed and threw their cigarettes. After half an hour some of the gypsy men started to ask Nicu questions about God, and about things from the Bible. They even brought latter a cd with Christian gypsy music that we gave them, and they were all listening it. Nicu ended sharing with them for more than five hours, answering to their questions, and preaching to them the love of Christ and His grace. It was wonderful. We didn't realized what the time was. God used this sad event so that those who never wanted to come to the church to be able to hear the Gospel. There were the men who are kind of the elders of the village, and surprisingly they were very interested in the Gospel. In this sad evening they could know us better, because now we were like one of them, seating there with them, talking and eating with them. After mid night we went home, being so blessed by what God has done that evening.
The next day we went there again, and in the evening some more gypsies came that attend our fellowship, and we started the evening with prayer and with praise songs. Believers and unbelievers were singing together this gypsy song which they love, "Oh, Lord, I cried to You, and You helped me". It was again a very blessed time, and last week evening even the father could sing together with us. God comforted him with His love. It was for the first time when he was exposed to gospel of grace. His face started to be more peaceful. God's Spirit did the work in his heart that a million words could not do.
The next Sunday after the funeral, he was the one that was waiting for us in the front of the church building. To our surprise, he came and hugged Nicu, and it is something that is not cultural for them. He was like another person, but the surprise continued, almost all the men that were there last evenings came to the church service. Until now mainly the women came to the church and one or two guys. But now the room was full of ladies and there were around eight or ten men. Again they were opened for the gospel and they prayed and sang with us.
Since then, the father of the baby is the first one that come to the church service and he is full of love for God. Two Sundays ago he brought his mother and his father to the church, his father being very sick, he asked Nicu to pray for him in the church, and he prayed for his father, too. He brought also to church his wife and daughters.
We want to encourage you, if you want to pray together with us for him, that the seed that fell in his heart to be in a good soil, to be able to brig forth lots of fruits. Pray also for him to learn how to be a good husband and a light in the village.
Praise God some of the other men from the village, started to attend church regularly. Pray for them, too that they could quite alcohol, and that they could understand how good is our God.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy!!
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